Internet Week NY: The Future of Media Panel Discusses the Present (#iwm) (#IWNY)

Yesterday, NY Convergence was able to check out  The Future of Media: 2011 panel, which was presented by media news website I Want Media at NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute.  Part of this week’s Internet Week NY events, the panel, which was in its 4th year running, featured several notable names from a variety of NY-based media outlets.  The panelists included media reporter David Carr of the The New York Times, Edward Felsenthal, the Executive Editor of Newsweek/The Daily Beast, Saul Hansell, the Big News Editor of The Huffington Post, Vadim Lavrusik, Facebook’s Journalism Program Manager, The New York Observer’s Editor-in-Chief, Elizabeth Spiers, and Remy Stern, Editor-in-Chief of Gawker.

Though the title of the panel referenced the “future” of media, most of the conversation centered around either the current state of affairs at the respective news organizations represented onthe panel or it addressed recent news developments. Hence, the first major topic brought up by moderator Patrick Phillips (founder/editor of I Want Media) was the issue of paywalls, starting first with Carr about the Times’ recent implementation of its paywall and querying whether the paper could ever go out of business. Carr gave a rundown of how things have changed at the Times since 2009 (the year in which the soon-to-be released documentary “Page One” about the Times was filmed), namely on how it is on schedule to pay off the loan from Mexican financier Carlos Slim, how the paywall is on track, and how the paper is just beginning to use the paywall to refine a premium advertising business model, or as Carr put it, to do a “Cashectomy” on its most dedicated visitors of NYTimes.com.  Unsurprisingly, Carr’s ultimate answer was that the Times will not be going out of business.

(As for “Page One,” throughout the panel, Phillips used the film, in which Carr is prominently featured, as an excuse to tease him about being a movie star, to which he replied it was like being, “the tallest leprechaun—not a big deal.”)

As for the other panelists, Spires did not foresee a paywall model for the Observer, as it she felt that giving the site away for free is one of the best tools her paper offers its readers.  Moreover, she explained that they reach readers, who are mostly affluent NYers, through luxury advertisements.  Stern also said that there are no plans for a paywall at Gawker.

When addressing Felsenthal about the Daily Beast coming together with Newsweek, Felensthal did not find the merger unusual, saying that they are two publications that are aimed at “a similar, smart, influential audience that is curious about the world.”  When pressed on whether the Newsweek brand could still be considered relevant, he said it is, but that the onus is on the company to prove to everyone that the unity can be successful. He also spoke of how both the Newsweek and Daily Beast brands are very powerful, and that to scrap them in favor of a new name would be a mistake.  In regards to Newsweek.com, Felsenthal did admit that in time, he could foresee it becoming a channel on the Daily Beast.com for more long read journalism, while the rest of the site would focus on daily, breaking news.

Midway through the discussion, the focus shifted to Hansell and The Huffington Post.  Accoding to Hansell, HuffPo has mastered  the “now”  in its ability to capture the  discussion of the minute.  Of HuffPo’s 1,300 journalists on staff, Hansell explained that a large chunk of them work for AOL’s Patch.com, its hyperlocal venture, which is currently in 800 towns across America and employs a variety of editors, staff writers and freelancers.  When probed whether AOL is depending on Patch to succeed, he said that it is important and a very large investment, but that AOL keeps changing and experimenting and that if Patch did close, AOL would not go out of business

When it was Stern’s turn to dive deep on Gawker, most of the focus was on the much reported recent redesign of Gawker Media’s blogs.  According to Stern, Nick Denton and Co. had seen the limitations with the reverse chronological format that Gawker was using until the beginning of 2011 ( a format still employed by a majority of blogs), namely that it did not give the blog a chance to feature exclusives, big news or unique original work, finding that much of this content got lost in the old format.  When queried by Phillips on whether Gawker’s readers can jsut scroll down the page to see stories, Stern countered that “people don’t scroll down” and that generally speaking, people don’t spend much time on websites. Though Stern admitted that the redesign has been challenging, most of the traffic issues with the site has been a result of technical issues, ones he claims that Gawker Media is resolving.

When addressing the sole non-media technology platform in the room,  Phillips asked Lavrusik why Facebook’s API is being integrated in more news sites, in which he replied that there has been a need for it, that many people are discovering news through Facebook and that the editorial arms of news outlets want to do more experimental things.  Ultimately, he equivocated news to always being about “word of mouth,” and that the Facebook news feed is essentially news from people, turning the platform into the “new word of mouth discussion.”

Near the end of the discussion, Spires discussed the new redesign of both the print edition and website for the Observer, which went live yesterday. While she said that the paper’s tweaks were a less noticeable move to make it look more like a newspaper again, the site’s redesign is more drastic.  She explained that historically, the Observer’s site was put together in piecemeal and that now, the site has been slimmed down with a minimalist, more aggressive approach to the news cycle and breaking news.

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